Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	holy_a	sin_n	word_n	7,355	5	3.9910	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26901	The church told of Mr. Ed. Bagshaw's scandals and warned of the dangerous snares of Satan now laid for them in his love-killing principles with a farther proof that it is our common duty to keep up the interest of the Christian religion and Protestant cause in the parish churches, and not to imprison them by a confinement to tolerated meetings alone / by Richard Baxter ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1672 (1672)	Wing B1226; ESTC R1907	28,184	36

must bear with unless you will separate from your own leaders Deal but impartially Is there one Parish Minister yea or one Parish Church Member of many that was ever convict of so much sin as Mr. Bagshaw hath published and silently but impertinently lyeth down under Is there many of them that ever defended half so much sin so obstinately without confession and yet so impotently without sence Separate from no Ministers or people that are not proved as guilty as this man and I will never more write against your Separation 2. And now the world and posterity shall see in this mans writings how the cause of unlawful Separation was defended in this age I openly profess that this is a great reason that drew me to Defend my Cure of Church Divisions by three following Defences that Posterity may see what interest and passion will not now suffer some to see I look to the times to come And if there be any wiser men among them that can say more for the Separating-cause they are best set to it For if they leave it on such hands as Mr. Bagshaws it is easie to foresee that it will be shamed for ever Yet do I solemnly profess that to my utmost remembrance I never in my life did venture upon or manage one dispute by word or writing through a confidence in my own ability to make good what I undertook but in a confidence of the goodness of my Cause and of the great advantage which the evidence of plain truth doth give to any man of good reason to defend it even against the cunningest Sophister that shall oppose it Sect. 3. And now I shall add my Admonition to you as not being quite ignorant of Satans Wiles to tell you what a snare is laid for you all in Mr. Bagshaw's Writings and as one that hath no interest but Christs and the Churches to move him to it to tell you how great the danger is if you swallow the bait 1. If he prevail with you he will draw you into the guilt of all those sins of his own fore-mentioned by your approbation consent And how great an addition will that be to your load 2. It would draw you to the entertainment of all those Love-killing Malignant and Dividing Principles which I cast down and he sets up And you little know what an evil it is to have an understanding so blinded and a heart so defiled 3. By this means that true universal Love to Godly men and Christians as such will be destroyed And when you should bear Gods Image who is Love it self you will be made like Satan the enemy of God and Love And instead of loving your neighbour as your self you will take your neighbours yea Christs members for your enemies 4. And as Love is the fulfilling of the Law so your death of Love will be the death of all your true obedience and lead you to the breach of every Law You will deny all the acts of Love in word or deed to others that you owe them to you will censure you will backbite freely you will receive false reports and vend them again to others And Christ may say to you Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least mark the least of these my brethren you did it not to me 5. You will be tempted into Treason against Christ under pretence of piety denying his interest in almost all his Churches in the world Even as if you should say that the King is King of one or two Towns only in all his Kingdoms on pretence that all the rest are not good enough to be his Subjects I profess openly that nothing in the world more moveth me to do what I do than this That there is much within me that will not suffer me without abhorrence to think of either unchurching all Churches in the world that use a set Liturgy yea that use one worse than ours or yet to hold that they should all be separated from And had I ever Vowed and Covenanted to do this as I did not it had been a sinful Vow 6. And moreover it will possess you with a degenerate and false kind of Religion consisting in sidings and partial opinions and obeying your selves instead of God 7. And it will make you Satans instruments to disturb all Churches that you joyn with if you do not want occasion and temptation For the Principles which I wrote against will let no Church be quiet where they prevail And a Kingdom or house divided cannot stand 8. You will be drawn from true spiritual worshipping of God and your worship and Church-communion will be corrupted Instead of holy and heavenly Sermons Prayers praises c. you will be infected with a contending and envying passion and puffed up with the conceit of your own judgments and grow zealous for your personal opinions and your parties and turn your preaching and praying into a strain that savoureth of this disease and defile them with unsounder passages for your errours or divided interests than any can be found in the Common Prayers which you shun 9. And if you be thus overcome it will heinously aggravate your sin that you will do all this as a part of your Religion and so will father it all on God as if such doing pleased him and proceeded from his spirit and were commanded by his word And as Matth. 12. it is made the unpardonable sin to blaspheme the Holy Ghost by ascribing his Miracles to Satan so though it be pardonable you should easily see that it cannot be small to say that those things which are pleasing to the Devil and proceed from his will and malicious suggestions are pleasing to God and proceed from his spirit and word 10. By these means Satan would make your Churches to do his work against the Lord whom they profess to worship and and to be the very Nests where PRIDE and IGNORANCE shall breed their like and shall cherish sinful Love killing principles and passions and animosities against your brethren And so your Assemblies will be acted too much by his suggestions and become his Work-houses while you think that they are serving God and mens wisdom will be earthly sensual and diabolical when they verily think it is from above Iam. 3 15 16. 11. Thus he would fain bring an odium upon your selves and cause you to go under such a character as the Munster Anabaptists and the Familists Quakers and such others do That men may say of you that while you take on you to be stricter than others it is but in abhorring other mens Prayers and extolling your own And that sin is no sin when you find it in your own party or your selves And that Lyars and most impudent Calumniators and proud Revilers c. go among your selves for Godly persons while the uprightest men that use the Common Prayer do go for Idolaters and Ungodly And if Satan can but get such an odious Character fastened on you what

utterly false Sect. 16. pag. 7. In a parenthesis he saith If there be any difference between you and us The Libeller filling three Pamphlets with heinous charges and after and before also questioning Whether indeed there be any difference between him and me Sect. 17. pag. 8 With as insolent ignorance doth he feign me to make that which he calleth Devised Worship viz. the Liturgy to be Idolatry in my foresaid Book and now to repent of and oppose what I held And all because Disp. p. 378. I say to such as they would suspend silence excommunicate punish all such as will not pray to God in the words that they impose on them that if Reasons will not allay their impious distemper but will domineer over mens consciences and the Church of God we must leave them to him that being the Lord and Law-giver of the Church is jealous of his prerogative and abhorreth Idols Remember that I spake of none but the Clergy And is there any man that excelleth not in ignorance and rashness that would have thought here that it is a Form of Prayer or Liturgy that I call Idols or that could not see at the first reading that I call the persons only the Idols that usurp the prerogative of God And will this pittiful man still falsly insinuate or suppose that all the honest Christians or Ministers of all the Parish Churches in England are such usurping imperious Idols yea or all the Bishops either Even Martyn himself as well as Ithacius Thus are poor souls abused by deceivers Yea note that in the same disputation cited by him I largely prove the lawfulness of Liturgies and Forms and the necessity of them in some cases Sect. 18. Ib. Yet doth he again most falsly say that I have unworthily receded from what I wrote and yet addeth that I have not that he knoweth of repented of it Receded from it and yet not repented of What a forgetful self-contradicter is this man And so he thanketh God that I was heretofore stirred up to write so much which now condemneth me even for the same that I there and then did write and never repented of Sect. 19. His next subject where he saith that I argue against the Divine and self-evidencing authority of the holy Scripture is one of the visiblest lyes that ever I saw written by a man When I had not only said the contrary but told where I had voluminously proved it to give me not a word of sense in answer but write as if he had never read my reply Being to Tell the Church I must desire them to consider Whether a more Impudent studied Lye impenitently insisted in after a double detection without an answer was ever presented to their view And whether they can name me a Christian Writer in the world more infamously self-stigmatized with this vice The rest that he writeth of it I cannot perswade my self to tire the Reader with an answer to Only I note that he citeth Mr. Hildersham's words with the false intimation that I contradict them while the same worthy man is both applauded by him and suppositively taken for a Patron of Idolatry as one that perswadeth men not onely to come to Church and Common-prayer but to come to the beginning False speakers do thus ordinarily contradict themselves Sect. 20. When pag. 11. he saith that a Papist is worse than of no Religion I say no more to him but that Overdoing is the Devils last way of undoing and that such men be they that multiply and confirm the Papists Sect. 21. Ibid. p. 11. he would have you know what Religion he is of and how he meaneth to save his Disciples from Idolatry saying Had not I learned the truth of Christian Religion from better arguments and a more certain way of reasoning than any your books afford I had still been plunged in the depths of Atheism Now 1. Note that Reasoning in a certain way preserveth him from Atheism 2. That he seemeth to say that he was an Atheist by saying I had still continued so But you must not expect such base mutability from him as when he hath denied the Living God to confess it plainly and profess repentance 3. Note that he will be an Atheist still and it seems perswade the Separatists to be such till he hath better Reasons than my Books afford Now the Reasons that my Books afford are these note them Reader First from the witness of God the Creator in the frame of Nature Secondly From the witness of God our Redeemer in his supernatural Revelations 3. From the witness of God the Holy Ghost on the Scriptures and in the Soul First Printing on the Scripture the Image of Gods Power Wisdome and Goodness which is its self-evidence And next by the Scripture printing the said Image of Gods Power Wisdom and Goodness on every holy soul which none but God is able to do These three Testimonies of the Father Son and Holy Ghost is the sum of my evidence enlarged Now Mr. Bagshaw will be an Atheist still and it seems perswade the Separatists to be such till he hath better reasons for his faith than the witness of the Creator the Redeemer and the Sanctisier God the Father Son and Holy Ghost This is his zeal for the Glory of God and the Cause of Christ and the good of souls Sect. 22. Yet pag. 13. with much railing he insinuateth this abominable falshood and calumny against Christs excellent Servants that Calvin Preston Hildersham Perkins c. would have no more done in asserting a Deity and Christianity than to tell men that all is true that God speaketh in his Word and that propria luce it is evident that the Scripture is his word and that to all Gods elect he will give his spirit to discern it and thus much alone is better than all these disputes and reasonings Whereas 1. These same men have all of them said much more themselves in their writings 2. And Paul preached otherwise to the Athenians Acts 17. and to others 3. And what kind of preaching would this man make among Turks and Heathens that deny the Scriptures You see 1. He will leave out all the Natural evidences of a Deiy and of mans immortal state and so all the Principles in which we are agreed with them 2. He will leave out all the Historical proofs that these Books were written by Christs Apostles and Evangelists and are not altered since And 3. That he will leave out the use of mans Ministry in Translating or Preaching And will let the illiterate Reader look on a Hebrew and Greek Bible till propria luce they know it is of God or at least that the Minister when they say How shall I know that this is Gods Word shall only bid them read it whether they can or not and if they be elect the spirit will cause them to discern that propria luce it will shew it self to be Gods Word but if they be not elect they have